AVBOB Integrated Annual Report 2018

as well as information on our funeral and insurance products and services. We also communicate with our stakeholders by means of video clips that are uploaded to our website. Our insurance intermediaries and Call Centre agents play a pivotal role in our communication with policyholders and with the public at large. Direct communication with employees and intermediaries takes place via the intranet, internet, circulars, electronic mail, information sessions and workshops. Senior citizens are part of our valued stakeholder group. We have established structures and processes that enable us to communicate with our senior citizens and ensure that we satisfy the needs of this target market. Timely and relevant workplace communication is vital to ensure that all staff collaborate and share information with the ultimate goal of achieving the Group’s vision to be a pacesetter in the funeral industry. We implemented the “Know your AVBOB” intranet which has been designed in line with our strategy of “ONE AVBOB”. The Know your AVBOB intranet provides a digital channel through which we communicate and it is a repository of important information. The intranet contains news articles and video clips and provides information on the Group’s leadership and strategic direction. It is also available to all our insurance offices and funeral agencies countrywide. Improve customer experience Companies lauded for superior customer service have a culture that supports excellence in customer service. Not only are their employees trained to render exceptional service but a set of beliefs, values, and requisite behaviours are interwoven into everything the company does. Customer service excellence has become “the way things are done around here”. It is about meeting the expectations of the customer at every point of contact and must therefore be monitored regularly and consistently. Our employees are brand ambassadors and embody the Group’s brand promise, as the service they deliver to internal and external clients has a definite effect on our reputation. Irrespective of how much experience we have, we need to keep building on our existing strengths and develop new areas of strength, to further grow the Group and face future challenges. Our existing and future business success also depends on continuously growing the level of AVBOB’s brand equity and our ability to provide market appropriate products, superior service and innovation. Customer centricity is therefore being pursued at all costs, in order to protect the AVBOB brand, and increase our funeral conversion rate, policy retention rate and insurance sales. To drive customer engagement and loyalty, we are looking beyond providing products and services, to creating lifelong relationships with our customers. As part of our journey to service our policyholders at first point of contact, we have developed models to empower our agency network to process certain policyholder transactions at the agency, without having to submit the policyholder request to Head Office for processing. We have also optimised our internal administration processes and systems to ensure that the Group continues to deliver on its service promise and resolves customer queries at the first point of contact. To drive home the concept of “ownership of service delivery”, the Net Effort System (NES), which is based on the same principles, processes and calculations as the Net Promoter Score (NPS), has been implemented to measure the service provided by internal support functions. To enable us to track our progress towards high-quality service delivery and to continuously improve our service levels, we use the Net Promoter System (NPS) to measure the quality of engagement or service at each consumer touch point i.e. funerals, claims, new business, call centre and service 40